


Call and Response

by dining_alone



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: (mal is dead and she lost her powers), Alina Got the Bad Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Past Mal Oretsev/Alina Starkov, Post-Book 3: Ruin and Rising, That's Not How Merzost Works, The Darkling Is Not Nice, graphic depictions of camping, slightly less problematic age gap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:00:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29763453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dining_alone/pseuds/dining_alone
Summary: "Alina." The Darkling hooked two fingers under her chin and tipped her head up. She blinked. He held her gaze, and the look in his eyes was searching, almost imploring."I came here to make things right," he said.***Ten years after losing everything, Alina Starkov makes a journey deep into the heart of the Sikurzoi. That's where the Darkling finds her.
Relationships: The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova/Alina Starkov
Comments: 6
Kudos: 96





	Call and Response

**Author's Note:**

> My first foray into the Grishaverse! Fair warning: I've only read the Shadow and Bone trilogy and the Six of Crows duology, so some of what's here might not gel with established canon in The Language of Thorns, King of Scars, etc. Yes, I probably should have read those first, but I had to exorcise this plot bunny before it took over my brain. Hope you all enjoy!

Alina Starkov stood at the foot of the Cera Huo, watching the dying sun set the torrent of water aflame.

A sharp wind blew in from the peaks to the south, and she shivered, though not entirely from cold. The bones of animals and men alike lay in a heap at the base of the black cliffs. This valley was full of ghosts.

She cast a glance towards the rucksack she had set down on a nearby rock, but then shook her head. It was too late to start sketching; the daylight was fading fast.

_And you can't make your own anymore._

Thoughts like these use to feel like a knife between the ribs. Now they elicited nothing more than a dull ache. 

With an expedience borne of years of practice, Alina set up camp, erecting her little canvas tent, stashing her bedroll and equipment inside, then setting off into the deepening twilight in search of firewood. Before Nikolai's rise to power, it would have been dangerous to risk a fire this close to the disputed Shu border, but the new peace treaty had mostly cleared the region of bandits and mercenaries. Still, a vague sense of unease had accompanied Alina from the moment she passed between the two rock spires that marked the ascent into the Sikurzoi. She couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched — although by what or by whom, she couldn't say. 

The peace treaty was what brought Alina to this part of the country in the first place. The line of black cliffs from which the Cera Huo sprung marked the new, heavily negotiated border between Ravka and the Shu Han. Alina was here on commission by the Ravkan throne to commit that boundary to ink and paper.

As she gathered up branches for kindling, she wondered for what felt like the hundredth time if she should have refused the assignment. The job was better suited to a team of Shu and First Army cartographers, not a single Ravkan freelancer. But the king had appointed Alina, and he respected her insistence on traveling alone.

"You're the best we have," Nikolai told her. It might even be true; Alina was far more skilled now than she had been as an apprentice in the First Army. But she suspected pity factored into the king's decision more than anything else. Maybe he thought the assignment would make her feel useful, valued. Maybe he assumed that without a steady stream of commissions, Alina would lose herself in some gambling den or at the bottom of the bottle. Maybe he worried she'd throw herself off a mountaintop.

She wouldn't pretend that the idea had never occurred to her. In the months after Mal died in her arms and her power left her, after she watched her own effigy burn on a pyre next to the Darkling, she thought of it often, even wondering how she would do it. The ultimate cruelty of losing her power was that she could no longer go out in a blazing slice of bright sunlight; she would have to settle for something mundane like a dagger or a length of rope, or a thin patch of ice on a frozen pond if she waited for winter.

But then she would think of Genya and Zoya, of Nikolai and Tamar and Tolya and all the rest of her friends, all the people who had sacrificed everything to help her, and she knew she couldn't go through with it. They had suffered so much already. Alina would not be the one to cause them any more pain.

She adapted. She let her past identities slough off like old snakeskin: the teenage saint, the commander of the Second Army, _Sol Koroleva,_ the sun queen waiting to claim her throne. Underneath, all that was left was Alina Starkov — although she rarely used that name anymore. She cropped her distinctive white hair to her jaw and concealed it under a hat or a hood if she was out in public. She didn't wear a Ravkan military uniform or a kefta of any color. Instead she dressed simply and androgynously in peasant clothes and was frequently mistaken for a boy. She encouraged this misconception; it made traveling safer.

She never stayed in one place for long. If her surroundings grew too familiar, Alina would inevitably start to look inward, to dwell on the gnawing absence at the heart of her. So she kept moving, slipping back into her old profession more as a pretense than anything else. She passed a summer in the Petrazoi and another in Tsibeya, charting old hunting trails. She crossed the True Sea and wandered the streets of Ketterdam, then moved on to the frontiers of Novyi Zem, then the green hills of the Wandering Isle. She even spent a few clandestine months in Fjerda before a diplomatic crisis forced her back across the border.

She still saw her old friends on occasion. She returned to Os Alta for Genya and David's wedding, then again for Nikolai's wedding to a Shu princess. But the Little Palace reminded her too much of everything she had lost. These days she felt more at home on a mountainside with the scent of pine in the air and the sun and wind on her face. She would rather sleep under the stars than on a plush feather bed.

 _But I wouldn't say no to a real dinner,_ Alina thought wryly as she stoked the campfire to life. After weeks of nothing but salt pork, hardtack, and apples, even the simple peasant fare they used to serve in the Little Palace sounded appetizing.

Alina stayed outside for a while after finishing her meal, staring into the fire, listening to the Cera Huo's ambient roar. Far off in the distance, barely audible over the rush of water, came a high, keening call: the firebird.

Now that she wasn't distracted by the need to follow its cry — to hunt the firebird down and kill it, to make another fetter of its bones — Alina couldn't help but hear sorrow in the sound, like the creature was searching for something it had lost long ago, calling out to someone who would never answer. As far as she was aware the firebird was unique, the only one of its kind. Had it always been that way? Had the creature had a mate once, a family, a nest of chicks tucked somewhere among the rocks?

The firebird cried out again, and Alina closed her eyes. She knew returning to this place would bring back painful memories — she had known that when she accepted the assignment — but she hadn't predicted how scraped raw they would make her feel. She kept looking up and expecting to find Mal sitting across from her, gazing at her with that odd mixture of hurt and longing. Saints, they had been stupid. Young, stupid, and infatuated with each other, but too fearful and stubborn to do anything about it until it was almost too late.

Alina felt the telltale prick of tears and immediately became angry with herself. More than ten years had passed since Mal's death. The girl who had buried him was not the woman she was today. And yet she couldn't help imagining what it would be like to have Mal with her now: not the teenage boy she had known, but the man he would have grown into. She imagined them roasting a fat grouse he had caught over the fire, sitting close enough to share in each other's warmth, talking about nothing in particular. He would have a beard with a few strands of gray in it, and laugh lines would have just begun to appear around the corners of his eyes. When the fire burned low, he would give her a look and say her name softly, then they would go back to the tent, and —

No, Alina couldn't think about that now. Sometimes she took comfort in the memory of their last night together. Sometimes she even dwelled on it purposely to drive another face — so different from Mal's, with its fine bones and ice-gray eyes — from her mind. But it felt wrong to bring those recollections here, into this valley full of ghosts.

Alina stamped out the last embers of the fire and crawled into the tent, praying to every saint she knew for an easy, dreamless sleep.

But the saints had other plans.

***

Alina woke suddenly a few hours later, her eyes snapping open in the darkness of the tent. For a moment she wasn't quite sure what had roused her. Then she heard it again: that high, piercing call. The firebird. 

Fear gripped her. It sounded much closer now, like it was almost directly overhead. She thought the creature's hunting grounds were at the top of the cliffs, but there was no way to be sure. What if hunger had driven it down into the valley? What if it never forgot the scent of the girl who had attacked it all those years ago? If either were true, Alina was as good as dead. The firebird had almost killed them when Alina was at the height of her power, and the only weapon she had now was the simple dagger she had purchased from a Fabrikator in Ketterdam. As useless as it would be against the creature, Alina scrabbled for the dagger. She usually kept it within reach of her bedroll in case there was trouble, but tonight it wasn't there. Cursing, she sat up and reached for her rucksack.

"This one isn't quite so fine as the one you stuck me with," came a voice from the darkness.

Alina froze, too petrified to scream. There was a shadow crouched at the mouth of the tent, a shadow in the shape of a man.

"Not even real Grisha steel," the voice continued. "I'm disappointed in you, Alina. I wouldn't expect you to fall for a forgery. Not when you've held the real thing."

The voice — low, smooth, and utterly familiar — immediately drove all thoughts of the firebird from Alina's mind. A breeze blew into the tent, carrying the scent of bare branches, of deep winter. She hadn't expected to hear that voice or catch that scent ever again.

"Who are you?" she whispered. She couldn't make out the man's features beyond the glint of his eyes and the gleam of the dagger — _her_ dagger — in the dim glow of moonlight through canvas.

"I think you already know."

Alina shook her head. "This is a dream," she said to herself. "A nightmare."

The man in the shadows cocked his head. "Which one is it, then? Dream or nightmare? The distinction seems important."

Alina's heart beat wildly in her chest. The beginnings of a cold sweat prickled her forehead. "Nightmare. Definitely a nightmare."

_It couldn't be him. It couldn't._

"Pity. We'll have to change that. Now come out into the moonlight. I want a better look at you."

Alina didn't move. She wasn't sure she could. Fear and shock had left her thoroughly paralyzed.

Exasperation threaded its way into the shadow's voice. "I'm not going to hurt you, Alina. You'd be dead already if I wanted to."

"You're the one who should be dead," she managed. _Because I killed you. I watched you bleed out on the sands of the Fold._

"And yet." The shadow reached out, offering her a pale hand.

Alina wasn't sure what made her take it, but she did. His hand was warmer than she anticipated, more human. Part of her had expected the chill of the grave. And his touch brought back a fleeting surge of _rightness,_ a ghost of their old connection. That stunned Alina more than anything she had experienced so far.

Dazed, she allowed the Darkling to pull her up and out of the tent. He released her hand, and for a moment they both stood in silence several feet apart, regarding each other.

The face he wore wasn't exactly the one she remembered; it wasn't the face that followed her through fragments of dreams and short-lived daylight reveries. But the variations were subtle and seemed to melt away the longer she studied him. The eyes were the main difference. Where they had once been grey, now they were such a deep brown that they looked almost black. But he still had the same high cheekbones, the same perfectly carved features. He was still beautiful.

With a flicker of self-consciousness, Alina wondered what he saw when he looked at her. The years hadn't been cruel to her, but they hadn't been especially kind either. She spent her days outdoors in bright sun and harsh winds, and there was only so much the creams and ointments Genya plied her with could do to reverse their damage. Moreover, constant movement had stripped away most of her softness, leaving her leaner even than she had been during her time in the First Army.

Inwardly, Alina cursed herself for these thoughts. The man she had killed more than a decade ago was standing right in front of her. It hardly mattered what she looked like.

She broke the silence, asking the question that had been burning in her mind since she first heard his voice. "How?"

The Darkling's lips twitched. He was still looking her up and down. "You're going to have to be more specific."

Alina let out a sharp, borderline hysterical noise. "How are you here? How are you alive? I stabbed you right in the heart. I watched them burn your body! Unless this really is a dream or some sort of — I don't know, hallucination or sickness..." She trailed off under the weight of his gaze.

"Did you truly believe a dagger to the chest was enough to finish me? I've lived for hundreds of years, Alina. I wouldn't have survived half this long if that was all it took."

"That's not an answer." She folded her arms. An icy wind was picking up from the south, raising gooseflesh on her skin.

"You're cold," the Darkling said. Alina watched in mute disbelief as he unbuttoned the clasp on the dusty black traveling cloak he wore and offered it to her.

She almost laughed. It was the sort of minor kindness she would expect from a good friend or a generous stranger — not the man who created the Shadow Fold, who condemned so many to hideous deaths.

Alina shook her head. She knew the cloak would smell like him. She didn't know what it would be like to wrap herself in that scent again, and she wasn't sure she wanted to find out.

"I'm going to light the fire," she announced, feeling vaguely ridiculous about it. She still couldn't shake the impression that none of this was real, that her mind was playing tricks on her somehow. But if it was all a hallucination, it might as well be a warm one. Besides, she wanted more light.

When she picked up the piece of flint she had left lying by the remains of the fire, the Darkling produced her dagger from somewhere in his cloak and extended it to her. Alina stared at it, suddenly swept back to that day in the Fold, to the moment she had plunged a different dagger between his ribs. Could she do the same tonight?

 _No, and evidently it wouldn't matter if you did,_ she thought fiercely.

She reached for the dagger. Her hand brushed the Darkling's, and there it was again: that faint charge, the echo of what they once shared. The Darkling's eyes met hers, black and inscrutable, and Alina knew he felt it too.

She snatched her hand away and busied herself with the fire. "You never answered my question," she said. She didn't look at him, focusing instead on striking the flint against the steel of her dagger. "How did you survive after they burned your body?"

"Bodies aren't always meant to be permanent."

A chill crept up Alina's spine. Almost unconsciously, she had assumed he looked different because someone — a bribed or threatened Corporalnik, maybe — had disguised him. Whatever he was alluding to now went far beyond that, outside the realm of the Small Science.

_Merzost._

She fought back a shudder. This time, when her dagger made contact with the flint, it sent a shower of sparks down onto the kindling. Alina crouched and blew on them until they flickered into low flame. Then she stood up and looked the Darkling in the eye. "That's still not an answer," she said.

He gave the barest hint of a shrug. "Ask a better question."

In the gathering firelight, Alina saw that he was dressed like a peasant, an ordinary Ravkan, albeit one with a penchant for blacks and grays. It was strange seeing him in anything other than his sweeping kefta; the only other time she had seen him dressed like this was when he kidnapped her in Cofton, when she first saw him summon the _nichevo'ya._

The old scar on her shoulder itched. It had never really faded, not the way an ordinary wound would have.

"Fine, putting aside the question of how you survived incineration, what have you been doing these past ten years? Biding your time? Why haven't you — I don't know — mustered an army of rogue Grisha and laid siege to the capitol?"

Something like a grimace flickered over the Darkling's features and was gone in an instant. "It hasn't been ten years. Not for me."

Alina shook her head. Her fear and shock — her wonder at seeing him alive — were rapidly ebbing away, replaced by frustration. "What does that mean?" she demanded.

One moment he stood across the fire from her, and the next he was only a few feet away. She blinked. She had forgotten he could move like that: silently, fluidly like he was part of the shadows themselves and not just their master.

"All these questions." He reached out and traced the line of her jaw, and Alina felt that small, buried thing inside her stir once more. She was trapped between twin impulses: to tear herself away and to lean into his touch.

"All these questions," he continued, his palm coming to rest against her cheek, "And still you've avoided the one you really want to ask."

Alina caught his wrist but didn't try to move his hand. He was right, and part of her hated him for it.

"Why are you here?" she whispered. "Why did you come find me?"

The beginnings of a smile touched his lips. "There it is."

The words spilled out of her unbidden. "There's nothing for you here. You said it yourself, remember? Just before you died. _You're nothing now._ That was what you told me."

In the long stretch of years, those words had haunted her just as much as the memory of Mal's lifeless eyes, as much as the sight of the Darkling's body consumed by flame. On nights when she couldn't sleep, when she stared up into the blackness of her tent or a dingy room in some out-of-the-way inn and felt the emptiness rising up to swallow her, she would hear him speaking those words. _You're nothing now._

"There's no power for you to harness anymore," she went on. "No useful alliance to be made with a peasant and an _otkazat'sya._ The girl you knew is dead. She burned next to you on the pyre."

"That can't be true," the Darkling said. He moved his hand from Alina's cheek to stroke a lock of hair from her face, his eyes never leaving hers. "I see her standing right in front of me."

It was too much. Alina wrenched herself away, taking a step back. For the second time that night, she felt tears threaten to obscure her vision. After all the loss she endured, she had built a life for herself. She had found peace — a fragile, hollow sort of peace, but peace nonetheless. And all it took was the reappearance of a dead man to bring it crashing down around her.

The Darkling didn't know her, not really. He knew _Sankta Alina,_ the Sun Summoner: beautiful, eternally young, brimming over with power and potential, surrounded by friends and allies and followers. The woman she had become — a solitary traveler worn down by time and grief — was a stranger to him.

Alina shook her head. "You knew a teenager." A stupid, naïve teenager, who had by some miracle managed to save her country.

"How old are you now?" asked the Darkling, eyebrows raised.

"Twenty-eight." Alina hated the defensiveness that entered her voice.

The Darkling inclined his head. "When you've lived as long as I have, there isn't much difference."

"It's made a lot of difference to me."

"I don't doubt that."

Alina turned away, looking out into the shadowy lines of trees that marched through this part of the valley. She needed to gather her thoughts, to calm down, and she didn't want the Darkling to see her struggling not to cry. Part of her was uneasy with the idea of leaving her back to him, but what he said earlier in the tent was true: if he wanted to hurt her, she'd be dead already.

Unless he meant to hurt her a different way.

"So are you here to take revenge, or just to gloat?" she asked, still not facing him.

"What would I take revenge for?"

Alina let out a huff of incredulity and whirled around. The Darkling's expression was one of mild confusion, but she knew he was an excellent actor when he needed to be.

"I killed you," Alina reminded him. "I destroyed the Fold and decimated your armies."

"As I said, clearly you didn't succeed in the former. The latter I blame on Morozova."

"Your grandfather."

The Darkling nodded. "His trick with the third amplifier." He took a pace toward her and cocked his head, eyes glinting in the firelight. "Tell me Alina, would you still have done it if you had known what it would cost you?"

She opened her mouth to say yes, of course she would have. Of course she would have paid any price to end the war and destroy the Shadow Fold. But her final memory of Mal flashed before her mind's eye: his blood staining the sand, eyes gazing sightlessly up at the receding darkness. Then Alina thought of the desolate place inside her where light used to bloom, the sheer hollowness of it clawing at her even now. Suddenly, she wasn't so sure.

The triumph on the Darkling's face was unmistakable, and Alina felt a powerful swell of self-loathing threaten to rush over her.

"Why are you here?" she bit out. She needed a real answer from him. She didn't know what she would do if he responded with some riddle or another distraction.

"I came because you called me."

Whatever Alina had expected him to say, it wasn't that. She shook her head forcefully. "I didn't. I never—"

The Darkling interrupted her. "You did. Your loneliness, your solitude...they called to me just as they always have."

Alina's first instinct was to insist that she was _not_ lonely, but such an obvious lie would serve neither of them.

"That night, in the chapel at Os Alta, you took something of mine," he continued. "Do you remember? You took a piece of my power."

Alina nodded; she remembered. Ever since that encounter she had been able to make shadows flit and waver, dance for her. It wasn't much more than a parlor trick, albeit one she had used to conceal her dagger before she stabbed the Darkling. But unlike her light, the ability hadn't abandoned her after Mal's death. It stayed with her through the years, though she rarely did anything with it. It was a pale imitation of her old power, a feeble mockery that only served to remind her of what she had lost.

"I believe that exchange preserved our connection," said the Darkling.

Alina frowned, considering. "Does that mean you aren't really here? That this is another vision, or—" She broke off, uncertain how to refer to those encounters years ago, where they had appeared before each other — even touched each other, she recalled, cheeks growing hot — with miles and miles of physical distance separating them.

He shook his head. "No, our connection isn't strong enough for that anymore. Not without Morozova's collar."

 _Not without your power_ hung unspoken in the air between them.

"But it was strong enough for you to find me?"

"Ah, not exactly." He gave her a small, rueful smile. "I had to rely on more conventional methods for that. Luckily, I caught word that an entire joint team of Ravkan and Shu professionals had been replaced by a single surveyor, handpicked by the king himself, and this surveyor was heading up into the Sikurzoi on her own."

Alina felt the blood drain from her face. Of course her insistence on traveling alone had been suspicious. "You've been following me for days now, haven't you?"

She'd felt like she was being tracked since she left behind the tiny settlements at the mouth of the valley, every rustle of leaves and snapping twig setting her on high alert. But eventually, when no bandits appeared to rob her and no mercenaries came to ransom her, she'd attributed these feelings to paranoia and the grim memories this place held.

The Darkling nodded. "Weeks, actually. Since you left Os Alta."

Alina's head swam. That long? "So why reveal yourself now?"

"I wanted to wait until we were truly alone." He took another step towards her. "I didn't want to have to share you with anyone."

Alina stood frozen as he approached. This was the same possessiveness she remembered from years ago. It was as though nothing had changed, like no time at all had passed — and maybe it hadn't, for him.

When the Darkling caught her up in his arms, she didn't try to pull away. She closed her eyes and breathed him in. The smell of the campfire lingered on his clothes, but beneath it she found his distinct scent: bare trees, moonless nights, freshly fallen snow. The promise of winter.

"Alina." He hooked two fingers under her chin and tipped her head up. She blinked. The Darkling held her gaze, and the look in his eyes was searching, almost imploring.

"I came here to make things right," he said.

Somehow, she knew he wasn't referring to the creation of the Shadow Fold, to all the suffering and countless deaths he had caused. This was about something else. What that something else was Alina neither knew nor cared, because none of this was real. It had to be a dream — one of her shameful fantasies come to life — because if it wasn't, that meant Alina would have to try to struggle out of his grasp, to find a way to escape and warn Nikolai and and Genya and Zoya and all the others that their greatest enemy had returned.

She didn't want to do any of that. She wanted to stay here in the warm circle of his arms. She wanted to get even closer.

"Let me." The Darkling's lips brushed the shell of her ear. "Please."

 _Let me,_ he had said to her once. _It isn't real. Let me._ She had pushed him away, then. She didn't think she was strong enough to do the same now.

He began to press a soft line of kisses against her jaw, and Alina closed her eyes again, letting her head fall back. She felt his smile against her cheek, and her stomach gave a faint lurch. She knew she was playing right into his hands, giving him exactly what he wanted. But she was done pretending she didn't want it too. She had wanted it from the moment he first called forth her power, and she kept wanting it in spite of everything she learned about him, in spite of everything she watched him do, even in spite of what she shared with Mal. The wanting had never really gone away; it only twisted and deformed and turned molten, pressed down as it was in the dark sediment of her subconscious. Watching his body burn all those years ago, part of what she had mourned was that desire — furtive, unrealized. Unrealizable, until now.

When the Darkling finally brought their lips together, Alina stood on her toes and grabbed the collar of his cloak, pulling him closer and deepening the kiss.

She hadn't kissed anyone since Mal died, since their last night on the edge of the Fold. A hot spike of guilt accompanied the thought. What would Mal say if he could see her now?

Then one of the Darkling's hands slid to the small of her back, and for a moment she stopped thinking entirely. His fingertips traced her spine, skating ever lower. Alina couldn't help but shiver against him.

She wasn't sure how they managed to make it to the tent without falling over, loathe as they both were to break apart. But before she knew it, they were inside the dim little canvas enclosure, and the Darkling's hands were snaking underneath the loose tunic Alina slept in, undoing the laces at its collar, pushing it over her head. Now his mouth was on her collarbone, on the shallow valley between her breasts.

Alina felt like she was caught up in a strong current, in a river rushing towards a waterfall with a precipitous drop, but she had no desire to try to paddle to shore. It was all happening so fast, and she only wanted it to happen faster.

Even in the gloom of the tent, Alina could see the color in the Darkling's lips and cheeks when he paused his ministrations and looked up at her.

"Now you," she insisted, undoing the clasp on his cloak and tugging at the hem of his shirt. "Come on."

He laughed — low-pitched and pleased-sounding — then shucked both items of clothing and fell on Alina again. Alina shifted her hips to roll them both over, wanting to regain some measure of control. The Darkling was larger than her, and stronger. He had power she did not. But he let her straddle him, let her press him back down to the bedroll, gazing up at her with a strange brightness in his liquid black eyes.

Alina ran a hand over the pale, smooth planes of his chest. He bore none of the scars she remembered from the only other time she had seen him like this. Between his new face and unmarred torso, she could almost pretend he was someone else entirely: a handsome stranger whose eye she had caught in a tavern, the man she had chosen for a semi-anonymous tryst. But she abruptly realized the idea held little appeal for her. Saints help her, Alina _wanted_ it to be him. She wanted it to be the Darkling underneath her.

She didn't allow herself to examine that thought too closely. She felt the hard length of him against her inner thigh, and a thrill of desire-tinged trepidation shot through her. She hadn't done anything like this in more than ten years. She preferred her solitude, her memories. After that final night with Mal, sex had always seemed fundamentally tainted by grief.

Alina must have stilled, or some measure of hesitance must have shown on her face, because the Darkling asked, "Thinking of your tracker?"

If there was bitterness behind his words, he hid it well. If anything he sounded amused. Alina shook her head. Did the remnants of their connection allow him to read her mind now?

"Don't talk about him," she said.

The Darkling responded by grabbing her around the forearms and rolling them both over again. Keeping her pinned supine, he made his way down her body, trailing feather-light kisses across her neck, her breasts, her stomach. When he let go of her arms, it was so he could roll her trousers down her hips and press his lips to the inside of her thigh. The thrill that overtook Alina this time was much more anticipation than nervousness.

"Did your tracker ever do this for you?" he murmured into her skin.

"You're jealous of a teenage boy." Alina's voice came out in a strained whisper. She felt the heat of his breath against the place she desperately wanted his mouth to be.

He laughed at that, sending small, delicious vibrations tingling up Alina's nerves. "I have no cause to be jealous of anyone. Not tonight." he said. Then he put his mouth on her, and all semblance of rational thought fled.

Alina didn't know how long it lasted. He could have been between her thighs for a few minutes or a few dozen. There was no way to be sure because her mind whited out after the second or third swirl of his tongue.

 _Saints, he's good at this_ was her first coherent thought. Then: _of course he is. He's had hundreds of years of practice._

When she came, it was almost a surprise: a wall of sensation catching her off guard as it crashed over her. She tensed and shuddered, twisting against his mouth, but he didn't stop or slow down. Instead he grabbed her hips and held her in place, kept going until a small, pathetic noise emerged from the back of Alina's throat. The stimulation was too much.

The Darkling looked up at her then, eyes hooded, lips wet, and Alina thought she saw a hint of that same triumph in his expression before he moved up to kiss her again. She tasted herself on him — faintly musky, but not quite unpleasant. 

The Darkling was right; although Mal had brought her to a fumbling climax during their last night together, he had never done _that_ to her.

Then again, Mal also never tried to enslave her, never tortured her friends, never destroyed a village and made monsters of all its inhabitants.

Nausea suddenly curled in Alina's throat. What was she doing here? She should be running for help. She should be fighting the Darkling off. She knew he could stop her easily, but she could at least make the attempt. She could do more than lie beneath him, pliant and eager while he played her like a harp.

But then the Darkling pressed his mouth to the pulse point between Alina's neck and jawline. His hand snaked its way back down her body, dipping below her waist. Alina couldn't help it; she arched into his touch. His other hand went to the small of her back, holding her close while he worked away between her legs, and it wasn't long before she came, trembling in his arms, a second time.

When the Darkling shifted his hips against her, Alina knew what he wanted. She also knew that she should say no — shove him away, order him out of the tent, tell him never to touch her again. He wouldn't force her, she was sure of that. In this instance, at least, she knew he would wait for her to come willingly.

 _It may well take me another lifetime to break you,_ he had told her once.

 _It barely took ten years,_ a small, cruel voice whispered from the back of her mind.

The night was still for a moment, its silence broken only by the firebird's call in the distance, melodic and lonesome.

"Alina," said the Darkling, bringing her back to the present. It was a question, even though it didn't sound like one.

 _It's not real,_ she told herself as she nodded. _It's a dream, a fantasy. A fairytale._ But the Darkling was warm and solid when he pulled her close, and the pain when he entered her was as real as anything could be.

He must have sensed her discomfort, because he paused. He stroked her hair and kissed her cheeks, her lips, her neck, giving her time to adjust. When he started to move again, his pace was slow and gentle.

_He's treating you like the virgin he wishes you were._

Alina pushed the thought aside. Soon she found it difficult to think at all. What was left of their old connection flared even more intensely with the Darkling inside her. She could actually _feel_ his pleasure, feel that same triumph she had seen earlier in his eyes. And she felt the black and nameless thing flowing beneath it all.

The Darkling wound his hands into her hair, scraped his teeth against Alina's neck. She arched and closed her eyes, wrapping her legs around his waist, drawing him in. A third climax was sparking and building inside her, closing in with each roll of the Darkling's hips. She knew he sensed it too when she felt his triumph spike and those strange black waters rise.

"Say it." His voice was low and silky, but it carried the hard edge of a command. "Say it, Alina."

Alina didn't have to ask what he meant. In the darkness of the tent, she spoke the name his mother had given him hundreds of years ago.

"Aleksander," she whispered.

He sped up, and so did she, lifting her hips to meet and match each thrust. Sensation battered her. She knew this couldn't last much longer.

"Again."

"Aleksander. Aleks — _oh_ —"

They tumbled over the edge together. The Darkling clutched her to him, grip as unyielding as iron, and it might have been painful if Alina weren't awash in her own pleasure and the echoes of his.

For a few breathless seconds they stayed like that, pressed together, the Darkling's weight on top of her. An escaped lock of hair hung down over his eyes, and there was a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. It occurred to Alina that this might be the most vulnerable, the most _human_ she had ever seen him. Even moreso than when she had watched him die.

Then her gaze met his, and the illusion was broken. Alina couldn't tell if it was just the dimness in the tent, a trick of the moonlight and the dying fire through canvas, but it looked as though the black of his irises had expanded to swallow the whites on either side, leaving behind two inky, fathomless pools in his otherwise perfect face.

She froze, terror threatening to lance through her. But a split-second later, the effect was gone. The whites of his eyes gleamed in the low light.

If the Darkling felt Alina stiffen or sensed the first stirrings of her fear, he didn't acknowledge it. He slipped out of her and settled with his bare chest against her back. Curling an arm around her waist, he drew their bodies flush together.

Part of Alina relished every inch of the contact. Part of her wanted more besides: his mouth on her again, tongue and fingertips inscribing clever circles, the velvet length of him inside her, going deeper, pulling her towards another sweet, temporary oblivion. But there was also that small, insistent voice in her head, chanting that something was not right, telling her to be repulsed by the wetness turned cold between her thighs, reminding her of the terrible way his eyes had gone black moments ago. She had seen the same blackness in Baghra's eyes after the Darkling blinded her, and in Nikolai's after his transformation. She was lying next to a man with a centuries-long trail of monsters and corpses in his wake.

The Darkling made a shushing noise against Alina's skin. "In the morning," he said.

She couldn't guess what he meant by that, and when his fingers traced the nape of her neck, she stopped speculating. The sensation dragged her back through the years. Suddenly she was a teenager again, the girl whose fear melted away at his touch, replaced by calm and surety. She felt the brush of his lips and closed her eyes. Sleep descended like a blanket of quiet snow.

***

Tucked away in the Darkling's arms, Alina dreamed of the _nichevo'ya._ It wasn't the first time; the grotesque, shadowy figures had been a regular feature in her nightmares since the day she saw the Darkling summon them. Countless nights she had dreamed of them surging up the walls of the Little Palace in a roiling, chittering mass, filling the skies over the Spinning Wheel, ripping Sergei limb from limb in spurts of bright blood, descending on Genya and tearing away chunks of her flesh while she screamed and sobbed.

In tonight's dream, though, Alina found them in the chapel on the palace grounds. She stood before the chapel's altar with the Darkling, their hands clasped together as the _nichevo'ya_ circled. He wore his old face; his eyes were the chips of gray quartz she remembered.

"My power is yours," he said.

This was all wrong. Wasn't _she_ supposed to tell him that?

Alina shook her head. It didn't matter, because she knew how this went. She had done this before, and she knew what she had to do next.

"And yours is mine."

Her grip on the Darkling's hands tightened. She reached down into the well of his power, delving deeper until she found that heady vein of _merzost._ She drank in as much as she could, then channeled it all into expanding the ranks of the _nichevo'ya._ She made another creature, and another. And another, and another, and another, until the shadowy mass of them filled the chapel floor to the ceiling, threatening to press in from all sides.

 _You'll kill us both._ That was what the Darkling was supposed to say to her now. He should be falling to his knees, taking her down with him. She should feel the energy seeping out of him, each new horror she birthed bringing them both closer to death. But they remained upright, and the Darkling was looking at her almost fondly, his expression caught somewhere between knowing amusement and fierce pride.

Alina didn't feel like she was dying. In fact she felt resoundingly, brilliantly, blindingly _alive,_ and the feeling only grew as the rows of monsters around them multiplied.

It was as though she was finally waking from a long and troubled sleep. It felt like the first touch of sunlight on her skin after years and years in the dark.

_Sunlight._

Alina's eyes flew open. Early morning sun streamed into the tent. Through the half-open flap, she could see the remains of the campfire and the line of trees beyond, the mountains rising blue and the Cera Huo roaring in the distance.

Then Alina registered the warmth at her back, the arm around her waist. Memories of the night before flooded in all at once, heated and disconcerting. She squeezed her eyes shut.

_It wasn't real. It can't be._

As if in response to this thought, Darkling pulled her closer. She abruptly realized she was naked, and so was he. They were touching everywhere. It should have repulsed her, frightened her — and it did, but barely. Not enough to stop the feverish thrill when he cupped one of her breasts and murmured her name into her hair.

"Turn around," he said. "I want to see you."

_Elbow him in the gut. Stab him in the heart. Get out of here, now. Get away from this place. Run. Run. Run._

Alina rolled over to face him. She took in the black eyes and dark brows, the perfectly symmetrical features and full lips, now curved into a small smile as he watched her. The satisfaction she felt pouring off him was somehow more real, more visceral than her own jumble of confusion, desire, and alarm.

He reached out and began to stroke her shoulder, her back, up and down. Alina's world narrowed to the soothing rhythm of his touch. She wanted to forget all of this and melt into the sensation. Couldn't she let herself have that much, at least for a little while longer?

Distantly, she registered that the Darkling was paying special attention to the scar his _nichevo'ya_ gave her: the cruel pucker that had never truly healed. The collar and fetter may be gone, but he had left one mark on her she wouldn't be able to shed.

He circled the raised flesh with a fingertip, applying only the barest hint of pressure. The look in his eyes was detached, transported, like he was lost in a vivid memory.

Without warning, the Darkling dug his fingers into the scar. Alina cried out at the sudden agony; it felt like she was being bitten anew, like the monster had sunk its fangs into her once more. She tried to struggle out of the Darkling’s grip, but he held her fast against him. She realized he was speaking, and even through the haze of pain, she heard genuine regret in his voice.

"I know it hurts, but it's just for a moment. It's the only way we can be sure."

Then came the call, and Alina — unthinking, desperate for reprieve — answered it. The answer rose up and rang through her, body and mind, until it echoed in every part of her being, blotting out the pain and everything else along with it.

She remembered this feeling. She remembered it from her first real encounter with Darkling, ages ago, in the Grisha tent on the edge of the Fold. But _this_ wasn't _that._ It couldn't be; Morozova had made sure of it. That part of her died with Mal — hadn't it?

Alina opened her eyes, half-expecting to find the tent full of blazing sunlight and shimmering heat. Instead she found the Darkling watching her again. The look on his face was intent, almost hungry.

He ran a finger down her arm. "Look," he said.

Her gaze followed his touch, and she gasped.

Shadows pooled and undulated in her palms, darker than any of her little parlor tricks had ever been, blacker than the space between the stars.

Alina blinked — this was a hallucination borne of pain and shock, it had to be — but when she opened her eyes again, the darkness remained. She could feel it there waiting for her, like it was an extension of her will: a part of her, strange and familiar all at once.

Her head spun. "Stop it. Whatever this is — stop it."

"I'm not doing anything, Alina. Not anymore. I made the call, but the answer was yours." The Darkling brought her hand to his lips and brushed a kiss against her knuckles. His eyes never strayed from hers. "Now," he said, "let's try that again."

The call pealed through her once more, this time without the urgency of pain behind it. Alina felt the power surge up in response all the same.

She could fight it. She knew she could — she'd done it before. Whatever the Darkling had done to her, it was a perversion, a twisted echo of the light she used to wield. But her body didn't know the difference. Nothing had felt this good, this _right,_ in ten years.

Alina let go. She let the shadows flow from her open hands, almost sobbing with relief. _Finally, finally, finally._

The Darkling held her close, stroking her hair and kissing her, guiding her through it just as he had the night before. The last thing she saw before darkness swallowed them both was his perfect stranger's face and black eyes, gazing at her with something close to reverence. Like she really was the saint all the peasants prayed to. Like she was a miracle. Like she was the very sun in the sky.


End file.
